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But a much more important question that I would like to ask you today is whether you have actually played Apocalypse.

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The answer is yes, and I think it's the best XCOM game out there.
People just were retarded faggots as usual.

Can't agree on TB being superior here though when RTwP is just that much more fun. In this particular case with these huge-ass maps full of nooks and crannies and the quite solid RT gameplay TB doesn't feel more tactical either, the options are also there in RT and combat preparation / formations / approach vectors etc is key in both.

Anyway, reinstalling. Which takes 2 minutes in my case, I still have a neat little 361MB archive sitting around on my hardware ready to go with DosBox.

Meanwhile in Apocalypse, the whole city is your little playground of horrors. It has buildings owned by various factions, neutral vehicles flying around, taxis, transport tubes and roads. And all of these are destructible. Indeed, Mega-Primus feels alive, as opposed to just being a strategic map, simply because you can blow it all to kingdom come, even if most of the destroyed infrastructure gets rebuilt in time. But your relations with all the factions in the city sure as hell don’t.

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I don't think infrastructure actually gets rebuilt ever. At least not major things, most maps have some major bridges that will get destroyed almost immediately by gangs if not aliens and permanently screw up the traffic. One of my bigger complaints about the city map aside from road vehicles being useless.

Factions have 5 states of relations with X-COM, from allied to hostile. It is generally a good idea not to maintain too many hostilities, particularly with more aggressive groups like gangsters, because a hostile faction will not only cease all trade activity with you, but will also periodically assault your bases. But, on the other hand, enemies make for an excellent secondary source of income if you are running a tight budget because you can also raid their buildings, destroy as much inside to cripple their economies, grab any loot you can find and get out. Thanks to this, you can even do a full “rogue” playthrough and go up against not just the aliens but also the city itself. The senate blocked your funding? Maybe it’s time to go there and take it yourself! It is hellishly difficult to win in this scenario, but the fact alone that you are given such an option is nothing less than amazing.

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Should have mentioned that there is a kind of "friend of friend is my friend and enemy of my enemy is my friend" system, which quickly makes diplomacy go completely nonsensical because you can't see the entire matrix of relations factions have, only the relations they have with you. This is why Transtellar gets angry over time even if you do zero city damage, they start with a weak liking of aliens which means that hate you more for every alien you kill which then makes them like the aliens more for every one of your soldiers they kill. For further obscurity the faction relations are also slightly randomized on every game start, so you basically need to download a savegame editor to figure out who likes who.

Unfortunately, holes start appearing in the system once you discover just how many of the organisations are actually expendable. Better relations with a faction mean upholding their services and getting a higher quantity of goods you can buy from them on the market, whether it’s fuel, soldiers or guns, but out of the 25, 13 don’t produce anything, making them nothing more than magnets for alien infiltration. Furthermore, the entire diplomatic layer of the game rather quickly degenerates into a bribery simulator, since bribes are the only reliable ways of improving relations, and peddling alien artifacts quickly gets you enough cash to keep every faction right where you want it to be (although putting alien guns on the market gives hostile factions the opportunity to buy them and use them against you!). It’s quite obvious that the diplomacy in Apocalypse was meant to be much deeper, but it probably was the first thing that ended up on the chopping block during the game’s troubled development.

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Did you play Superhuman? The costs to bribe factions goes up immensely, around 100k for a single level of improvement.

Second, a few of them are annoying as hell. Take the multiworm. It’s a hp-bloated vagina dentata with an acid spit attack. It has the 3rd highest alien health count in the game, but can be encountered from the very start. The only way you can reliably eliminate those without shooting them from afar for half an hour is spraying them with autofire from point blank. But the trick is that these shits spawn 4 little hyperworms on death, and those buggers appear with full time unit pools and high reactions, meaning the next action your agent takes will likely result in his instant death.

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Stun em.

Normally, degenerate tactics like these would get stopped by the threat of reaction fire, but this is also not the case in Apocalypse. You have to remember your agents start with good armour, so a single shot won’t bring them down. They also get personal shield generators later on, making them even more sturdy. Plus, most aliens have terrible reaction scores and TUs. And finally, reactions are not limited only to shooting anymore. There are a few AI protocols for reacting to enemy actions, and while at first it might seem impressive that a unit will interrupt another one to move behind cover or even dodge a fired shot, these TUs would often be better spent simply blowing the enemy’s head off, especially since the new reactions also permit the unit to shoot multiple times before letting an enemy act again. This happens often when you set your agents to “aggressive” mode, which prioritises shooting over movement. In these cases, a duo of agents with high reactions can unload their whole magazines in a wild shootout after spotting an alien before letting it act again.

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Reaction fire is actually arguably "bugged". The problem is that a unit can only save a max of 20 (IIRC, though it might have been % based) of their TUs for reaction rather than the full TUs. Probably was a hacky solution to stop players from forcing to spend 10 mins on alien turn watching their own soldiers fire 50 MG shots for every step an alien takes (which would also screw their ammo supply). My assumption is that the alien reaction scores were lowered first and then after putting in the 20 TU cap no one bothered to raise their reactions back up, because the 20 TU cap completely kills the reaction ability of aliens that are normally faster and could slaughter your soldiers in close quarters.

On the flip side, the 20 TU cap is ONLY enforced at end of turn - which is why when a brainsucker spawns from being shot at you or a multiworm lets out 4 hyperworms, they have their full TUs to use as reaction. This means that hyperworms that just came out of a multiworm have at least 4x as many TUs as hyperworms encountered in the wild, and is why Brainsuckers can still ignore your huge-reactions soldier with their 9 reaction score - because your reduced TUs give a huge penalty to reacting.

Which ones? Some of them are merciless murdertools, and some of those you even get from the very start. The only really terrible gun that I can name is the starting sniper rifle - there's no use for that piece of shit whatsoever.

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It's got use. Aesthetics.

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Energy sniper rifle has a use - it gives really high accuracy stat gains for some reason, especially dual wielding in RTwP. Also energy weapons are nice for poppers, which can show up in the first week if you are doing good.

All energy weapons are gimped. Plasma pistol is weaker than in EU, laser is pathetic, disruptor gun is weaker than plasma pistol from EU, Devastator cannon is much weaker than heavy plasma from EU.

To make things worse, human agents have starting health of 40-50 instead of 25-40 like in EU. Which means that besides the initial gimping, weapon damages are effectively 1,6x smaller.

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I disagree as far as disruptor guns and devastator weapons being gimped - they are still pretty potent. Lasers and plasma being 'gimped' makes sense because they are starting guns that are omnipresent, cheap and easy as hell to loot.

And in regard to the second thing, this is where the 'problem' with Apoc lies, not really with the guns themselves, and I noted it as well in the article. The agents are just more beefy all around, including stats and starting gear (seriously, that megapol armour is crazy good), and get even more beefy as the game goes on, particularly due to the personal shields. The shields, in fact, are what perhaps breaks the game the most, and what makes the devastator cannons feel gimped compared to heavy plasmas. If the aliens had a shield-ignoring equivalent of the toxgun, X-COM agents would be in much bigger trouble. But they don't, so they don't, to quote a classic.

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It's a problem stemming from the RTwP system. Since every battle turns into a hectic shootout having UFO:EU-babbies that die with 1 hit would basically make RTwP impossible. Heavy armor is pretty much the only thing keeping your soldiers alive in RT while in TB you can literally go naked and actually be better off because blitzing the map in 2-3 turns with the extra TUs you have from not being weighed down is a powerful option.

Which ones? Some of them are merciless murdertools, and some of those you even get from the very start. The only really terrible gun that I can name is the starting sniper rifle - there's no use for that piece of shit whatsoever.

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It's got use. Aesthetics.

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Energy sniper rifle has a use - it gives really high accuracy stat gains for some reason, especially dual wielding in RTwP. Also energy weapons are nice for poppers, which can show up in the first week if you are doing good.

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I guess that's one positive thing. Still doesn't change that it's completely useless for its intended purpose as a weapon though.

Sniping in general sucks in Apoc. Changing the accuracy mechanics to simply being an aperture, causing enemies 2x as far away to be 2x as hard to hit, makes aimed shooting at long range useless compared to simply getting closer or shooting faster but less accurately.

A similar situation can be seen in JA2 vs. 1.13 with the new aiming system. Vanilla was massively biased towards single long-ranged high accuracy shots, while the 1.13 altered accuracy system makes you always want to burst and autofire at mid range.

A similar situation can be seen in JA2 vs. 1.13 with the new aiming system. Vanilla was massively biased towards single long-ranged high accuracy shots, while the 1.13 altered accuracy system makes you always want to burst and autofire at mid range.

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I'm not sure this is necessarily WRONG, though. This IS how real combat works, people don't field squads of nothing but snipers because you DO generally want to fight this way.

TNo, it's both guns and armour. If guns weren't gimped, megapol armour wouldn't help much to non-HP-bloated soldiers. If devastator cannon would have stats of a heavy plasma or higher, it would take down shield with one shot.

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Yes, but consider how much CHEAPER it is for an agent to fire a shot in Apoc. Compared to original X-Com, where an agent can get maybe 2 or 3 good shots, firing a Devastator cannon costs some much smaller fraction of your TU. The standard machine gun is still the best until your AP gets too high, though. 1 TU per shot, so a 70-odd AP agent can hose something down with about 70 bullets, which is enough to chew through anything at point blank and bombard even long-range enemies with enough lead to maim or kill.

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It removes the whole instant-kill factor of UE, though (could make a difference for example for taking down a rocket launcher dude). Shooting costs are seriously weird due to lack of distinction of aiming time and rate of fire.
Though for example in GURPS you'd still get high weapon damages even with high RoF.

From what i remember, the project was huge, and due to cuts in the budget they had to hurry the launch, thats why its so unbalanced. Still a flawed gem for me, and i would still play it.

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No, it wasn't a question of budget. The game was so large and complicated that it wasn't possible to QA. They intended multiple alien dimensions. It was simply impossible to test.

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned;
they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

A similar situation can be seen in JA2 vs. 1.13 with the new aiming system. Vanilla was massively biased towards single long-ranged high accuracy shots, while the 1.13 altered accuracy system makes you always want to burst and autofire at mid range.

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I'm not sure this is necessarily WRONG, though. This IS how real combat works, people don't field squads of nothing but snipers because you DO generally want to fight this way.

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It's less wrong if you do it right, but far worse if you do it wrong. And Apoc gets it very, very wrong. The MG in Apoc might as well be a melee weapon in turn based mode, its the only way you'll use it.

I don't think infrastructure actually gets rebuilt ever. At least not major things, most maps have some major bridges that will get destroyed almost immediately by gangs if not aliens and permanently screw up the traffic. One of my bigger complaints about the city map aside from road vehicles being useless.

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P. sure all support structures like people tubes and roads get rebuilt in time. Buildings are a bit trickier from what I've noticed - I nuked one temple of the Cult of Sirius to the ground and it popped up again eventually, but there was a slum (owned by Diablo, I think) that was busted at some point by someone (not me, so it could have been aliens, maybe) and I believe it didn't get reconstructed.

just as I had intuited, choice D was a way to unlock our latent talent (damn I just discovered a new palindrome) for instant transmission. now whenever we need to get somewhere quick we just drink a bottle of expensive brandy until we pass out and we will wake up at our desired destination.

God, I actually love this. I'm actually a fan of Blizzard again because they're such CUNTS. They got every Diablo fan in a big auditorium just to make them watch a snuff movie of their franchise being brutally murdered with a shovel. Do you know the best part of this? They actually give Blizzcon goers a "loot bag" sort of thing which has a bunch of little souvenirs to remind you that you were there. Hahahaha, every Diablo fan that just got their heart ripped out of them by Kano a few hours ago has something to always remember this event by.
Well done, Blizzard. This was a master troll. What madmen. Fuck those losers.

All those who share the blood of germans without sufficient sublimation with the spirit of mediterranean civilization are destined to become harbingers of the apocalypse and destroyers of Christian culture.

Sawyer's hipster imperialism, rape apologism and longing for failed austrian leadership is but a reflection of that.

21st century anti-globalism is THE greatest popular uprising against the rich and powerful ever known to men. Communist shitstains promised to fight the "evul capitalists", only killed a bunch of random people for no reason and eventually became the bitchboys of the Globalist Cabal that is composed entirely of the fucking 1%. Ours is a fight of the common men and women against the people who control all the media, the entertainment industry, the banks, the megacorporations, the international bureaucracy (EU/UN/OEA etc) and probably more stuff I forgot about. Only God is on our side and he is all that really matters.

I've definitely never seen people tubes get rebuilt, and its pretty obvious since it screws with your people transportation. But I've never let the game drag on after neutering the alien presence, so it's possible there's some kind of money factor they will eventually build up enough to restore it.

It's less wrong if you do it right, but far worse if you do it wrong. And Apoc gets it very, very wrong. The MG in Apoc might as well be a melee weapon in turn based mode, its the only way you'll use it.

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Wait, what? The MG in Apoc is my favorite weapon, the ONLY human weapon I use, and it's most certainly NOT merely a melee weapon. The hard part is securing enough ammo for it, which requires lots and lots of stunraiding as there is practically no ammo on the market. I love that gun. Sure, its accuracy isn't terrific, but it can unload SO MANY BULLETS that this doesn't even matter. Its potential for collateral damage is also quite low, unlike heavier weapons capable of levelling entire buildings. A single trooper can easily send two magazines worth of ammo downrange in a single turn. No alien survives. One or two troopers with them can empty an entire room of half a dozen aliens in a stream of lead. The more target-rich your environment, the better that gun is! 1 TU a shot? Yes, please!

Long range, short range, shields, no shields, this weapon does it all. At long range, you can still expect to hit things due to the sheer volume of lead it unloads. At short range, a single trooper has gunned down 10+ aliens in a single turn before. It's only when you get to such high TU levels that your shot cost suddenly doubles that you should stop using it, and they eventually get supplanted by Toxiguns for alien-fighting as they lose their 1 TU shot much more slowly. But until then, and all the way into the very end of the game, the MG is the best weapon in the game.

It's less wrong if you do it right, but far worse if you do it wrong. And Apoc gets it very, very wrong. The MG in Apoc might as well be a melee weapon in turn based mode, its the only way you'll use it.

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Wait, what? The MG in Apoc is my favorite weapon, the ONLY human weapon I use, and it's most certainly NOT merely a melee weapon. The hard part is securing enough ammo for it, which requires lots and lots of stunraiding as there is practically no ammo on the market. I love that gun. Sure, its accuracy isn't terrific, but it can unload SO MANY BULLETS that this doesn't even matter. Its potential for collateral damage is also quite low, unlike heavier weapons capable of levelling entire buildings. A single trooper can easily send two magazines worth of ammo downrange in a single turn. No alien survives. One or two troopers with them can empty an entire room of half a dozen aliens in a stream of lead. The more target-rich your environment, the better that gun is! 1 TU a shot? Yes, please!

Long range, short range, shields, no shields, this weapon does it all. At long range, you can still expect to hit things due to the sheer volume of lead it unloads. At short range, a single trooper has gunned down 10+ aliens in a single turn before. It's only when you get to such high TU levels that your shot cost suddenly doubles that you should stop using it, and they eventually get supplanted by Toxiguns for alien-fighting as they lose their 1 TU shot much more slowly. But until then, and all the way into the very end of the game, the MG is the best weapon in the game.

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It's better as a melee weapon than as a gun. When the enemy is 5 tiles away taking 10 TUs to run up increase your chance to hit from 30% to 100% is an absurdly good deal both in TU efficiency and ammo efficiency. If you want to deal damage from range in TB, you use HE cannons (only have to hit ground) or Grenades (0 TU to get and prime because RT, like 10 TUs to throw and 100% accuracy because lol).

Also stunraiding is essentially cheating. Play without it and you'll see how spraying from long distance runs you out of ammunition in 2 missions.

One interesting thing about Real Time is that, since you use far more ammo, you actually need to use much more diverse ranges of guns in order to have something to shoot for everyone (at least until rechargables/toxiguns).

It's better as a melee weapon than as a gun. When the enemy is 5 tiles away taking 10 TUs to run up increase your chance to hit from 30% to 100% is an absurdly good deal both in TU efficiency and ammo efficiency.

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If I can kill the enemy in about 4 shots, spending 10 TUs to run up to the enemy + 4 more to shoot him = 14 TUs to kill him. Spraying 14 TUs worth of bullets at 30% = 4.2 hits, with the added benefit of not having to leave cover, and the possibility that your missed shots hit something anyway. In fact, one of the things about X-Com is that accuracy is generally always higher than stated because missed shots have to go SOMEWHERE.

Also stunraiding is essentially cheating. Play without it and you'll see how spraying from long distance runs you out of ammunition in 2 missions.

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Well, that's mostly one piece of brokenness countering another. I would have no problem paying for all the ammo, except for some bizarre reason they don't seem to want to sell any, and eventually STOP selling it even in the face of escalating demand. What the hell kind of business STOPS producing the product that their customers are buying in large quantities? Stunraiding is XCom-A is just like base-raping in Ye Olde. Apparently some sort of bug breaks the marketplace and it just plain stops selling things.

It's better as a melee weapon than as a gun. When the enemy is 5 tiles away taking 10 TUs to run up increase your chance to hit from 30% to 100% is an absurdly good deal both in TU efficiency and ammo efficiency.

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If I can kill the enemy in about 4 shots, spending 10 TUs to run up to the enemy + 4 more to shoot him = 14 TUs to kill him. Spraying 14 TUs worth of bullets at 30% = 4.2 hits, with the added benefit of not having to leave cover, and the possibility that your missed shots hit something anyway. In fact, one of the things about X-Com is that accuracy is generally always higher than stated because missed shots have to go SOMEWHERE.

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Most enemies take way more than 4 shots, those that don't are incredibly small targets that are going to have a 5% chance to hit (nevermind the multiworm which is both incredibly hard to hit AND will take 25+ shots). And 30% was probably really generous for a human-sized target at 5 tiles, APOC accuracy is atrocious. Wasting ammo is always bad, and if there are multiple targets to shoot then you DEFINITELY need to get close, because otherwise odds are you won't kill them all at range.

Also stunraiding is essentially cheating. Play without it and you'll see how spraying from long distance runs you out of ammunition in 2 missions.

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Well, that's mostly one piece of brokenness countering another. I would have no problem paying for all the ammo, except for some bizarre reason they don't seem to want to sell any, and eventually STOP selling it even in the face of escalating demand. What the hell kind of business STOPS producing the product that their customers are buying in large quantities? Stunraiding is XCom-A is just like base-raping in Ye Olde. Apparently some sort of bug breaks the marketplace and it just plain stops selling things.

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They don't sell it because they don't manufacture enough ammo and guns per week. How are they supposed to sell you stuff faster than they can build? They already stock more and more every week based on what you buy.

Stunraiding is literally 100% cheating, you might as well just edit your save to give yourself what you want and edit your characters to max stats.

just as I had intuited, choice D was a way to unlock our latent talent (damn I just discovered a new palindrome) for instant transmission. now whenever we need to get somewhere quick we just drink a bottle of expensive brandy until we pass out and we will wake up at our desired destination.

God, I actually love this. I'm actually a fan of Blizzard again because they're such CUNTS. They got every Diablo fan in a big auditorium just to make them watch a snuff movie of their franchise being brutally murdered with a shovel. Do you know the best part of this? They actually give Blizzcon goers a "loot bag" sort of thing which has a bunch of little souvenirs to remind you that you were there. Hahahaha, every Diablo fan that just got their heart ripped out of them by Kano a few hours ago has something to always remember this event by.
Well done, Blizzard. This was a master troll. What madmen. Fuck those losers.

All those who share the blood of germans without sufficient sublimation with the spirit of mediterranean civilization are destined to become harbingers of the apocalypse and destroyers of Christian culture.

Sawyer's hipster imperialism, rape apologism and longing for failed austrian leadership is but a reflection of that.

21st century anti-globalism is THE greatest popular uprising against the rich and powerful ever known to men. Communist shitstains promised to fight the "evul capitalists", only killed a bunch of random people for no reason and eventually became the bitchboys of the Globalist Cabal that is composed entirely of the fucking 1%. Ours is a fight of the common men and women against the people who control all the media, the entertainment industry, the banks, the megacorporations, the international bureaucracy (EU/UN/OEA etc) and probably more stuff I forgot about. Only God is on our side and he is all that really matters.

just as I had intuited, choice D was a way to unlock our latent talent (damn I just discovered a new palindrome) for instant transmission. now whenever we need to get somewhere quick we just drink a bottle of expensive brandy until we pass out and we will wake up at our desired destination.

God, I actually love this. I'm actually a fan of Blizzard again because they're such CUNTS. They got every Diablo fan in a big auditorium just to make them watch a snuff movie of their franchise being brutally murdered with a shovel. Do you know the best part of this? They actually give Blizzcon goers a "loot bag" sort of thing which has a bunch of little souvenirs to remind you that you were there. Hahahaha, every Diablo fan that just got their heart ripped out of them by Kano a few hours ago has something to always remember this event by.
Well done, Blizzard. This was a master troll. What madmen. Fuck those losers.

All those who share the blood of germans without sufficient sublimation with the spirit of mediterranean civilization are destined to become harbingers of the apocalypse and destroyers of Christian culture.

Sawyer's hipster imperialism, rape apologism and longing for failed austrian leadership is but a reflection of that.

21st century anti-globalism is THE greatest popular uprising against the rich and powerful ever known to men. Communist shitstains promised to fight the "evul capitalists", only killed a bunch of random people for no reason and eventually became the bitchboys of the Globalist Cabal that is composed entirely of the fucking 1%. Ours is a fight of the common men and women against the people who control all the media, the entertainment industry, the banks, the megacorporations, the international bureaucracy (EU/UN/OEA etc) and probably more stuff I forgot about. Only God is on our side and he is all that really matters.

Vehicles you buy come with weapons pre-installed and with full ammo. Plus the weapons that don't use ammo are actually some of the best for most of the game.

Spoiler(Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content)Show SpoilerHide Spoiler

Actually there is a huge bug/expoit with this where the ammo is free, so if you unload the vehicle and sell it back you can amass huge stockpiles of missiles and elerium at no cost. And its almost impossible to avoid taking advantage of unless you are sure to sell vehicles back fully-loaded with their original weapons, lol.